LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Great Rift Valley: Southern Kenya
built 605 days ago
Like dusty and deserted cowboy towns in an American western, the empty villages crop up one after another along the cracked roads of Kenya's Rift Valley. Some, like Mau Summit, once a bustling community, have been reduced to ramshackle assemblages of burned-out shacks, broken storefronts and empty streets littered with the detritus of weeks of violence. In Mau, all that remains of the Good Start Nursery School is a neatly lettered sign. Kalenjin youths from the neighboring town of Kericho came in early Saturday morning and torched the town's main square and most of the surrounding buildings. A few arrests were made, but they came as little condolence to the 3,000 Kikuyus huddled into St. Kizitos Catholic Church down the road, where buses were being organized to relocate people lucky enough to have somewhere to go. Loading furniture and other household goods onto a waiting truck, Joseph Kariuki, the church's harried chairman, explained, "These are the things from the people affected by this war."
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The Rift Valley is almost completely agrarian, and the land is very green and lush. The area is rural, with farmers and merchants living their daily lives. You see Kenyans, young and old, taking care of their land, digging, gardening, and herding sheep and cows. Young kids play in big, wide open fields. As you drive up to the highest points of the Rift Valley, you see men, women, and children on the side of the road, heading to various destinations – to small towns, the city of Nairobi, and other parts of the Rift Valley. Some are walking, some sit on two-wheeled carts pulled by donkeys, and others are waiting patiently for matatus (buses).
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With its dramatically steep inclines and expansive domination over the landscape, Kenya and Tanzania are the two countries which are most characterised by the Great Rift Valley’s presence. Both of these countries boast high-lying inland plateaux and fertile coastal belts dotted with numerous tropical islands.
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Southern Kenya